OS's comp(ish) fun trucks.

[OSRC]

My usual crawl spot was packed last weekend due to a Fall Fest, so I ended up just doing some backyard crawling just to shake it down Spare Parts a bit. It was ready to roll pretty much, though I need to drill a few holes for the bumpers. It made short work of pretty much anything I threw at it. Climbed some decent sized stuff around the yard, including the "test tree" It's a huge old gnarly maple that is pretty fun to climb around -fantastic sidehill and stability test.

I did run into an issue getting the battery in - the body posts were so low they were blocking the battery tray, and I couldn't get my fat fingers under the chassis spacer to get it tight. I fudged it in there and wheeled around anyway. Felt great overall - super stable, tires seem very grippy and nothing fell off though the bumpers were about to fall off. I think there might be some rear shock tuning in my future, but I'll run it first in the woods and see.

Brought it back in and modded the body mounts and moved the chassis spacer a bit Also got the bumpers finished up and mounted solid so it's 100% ready to go. Can't wait to get it out for a real challenge.

 

[OSRC]

Finally got some time to get out in the woods last weekend. Not bad for a Nov. day, about 63 degrees. I'll take it! Brought the copper tops, the TRX4 Carbon and the Spare Parts SCX10 and took a ton of pics.

Taking a few pics along my test loop. Scale trucks not invited... We used to head up through here with first gen SCX's back in the day, but it's really getting washed out, and some of the gaps are getting tough. Second run on belt drive, and so far so good. Never missed a beat.

Climbing though the roots. Portals make such a difference here.

Pretty tough little section - up the face of the rock, and then up and over the big one in the back. Very cool section to wheel.

Leaves were a problem today. We haven't had any rain in nearly 50 days and they are just stacked everwhere and very loose and dry. I skipped the upper part of my run - it was totally buried.

This is a tough little climb, that gap at the bottom causes all kind of mayhem. The TRX handled it just fine with a little bump. I don't know why, but the Predator TSL's seemed super grippy today. Maybe because it was very dry and cool, I don't know. But they did great.

Sidehills just fine for a portal truck. Could be the Velcro tires today, I don't know but it stuck really well. Tricky line, you have to go under the tree poking out of the rock and there's a decent gap there where the roots are cleaving the rock.

Then, over to the "big betty" rock. It's steep and usually wet at the bottom which makes it pretty tough - though not today.

Getting to the top of betty...this is the only way off and it gets deeper every year as the smaller rock is sinking. Had just enough tire up front to pull it out.

At the top there's the Spine. Awesome, huge wedge shaped rock. Can crawl up either side - both are quite tricky and then ride along the top. Piece of cake with portals.

Then finally heading out, you have to straddle between the tree and the rock to get back to the path. Lost a lot of mirrors here.

On the way out, I had to stop at The Test Rock. I painted some lines on just for fun. Harder lines in red. Every one of my trucks gets some time on this rock, it's kind of the benchmark for performance testing.

Hard climb on the right - I can only get through it with a bump, it just won't plant the front.

The TRX makes all the lines, though it needs a bump for the far left climb too. I like to try it from a standing start at the bottom first, and see how far I can get on grip alone. The TRX was so close, but couldn't quite get there. No problem with a little run up though.

 

[OSRC]

Finally got to shake down Spare Parts. There's a lot of potential here, but I whiffed on the setup pretty bad. The rear shocks were all but frozen - way too stiff on the springs and oil. There's no weight back there on the chassis either and it turned out to be a pretty sucky combo. I did some trail tuning and laid the shocks down as much as I could and it helped, but really needs some internal adjustments.

Still, it did some good things. Got through the same tough spots I just put the TRX through, though with a little more drama here and there. While the TRX walked right up here, SP had some issues. Rear tires would hang up in the gap and it just wouldn't hook the front at all. I did get up there eventually with a wild fingers crossed bump.

Sidehills very well. Especially with a frozen rear suspension.

Had some issues with the Spine, it was pretty tippy at the top. Definitely think some rear shock work will really help.

Back over to The Test Rock, took all of the hard lines very well. The tires were finally starting to break in and were getting grippy. So far, they seem to hop a lot more than the TSL's. I'll give them a little more runtime before passing official judgement.

Got about the same way up the hard line on the right as the TRX which kind of surprised me. I expected the solid axle rig and its lower COG to really make a difference here, but not so much.

Freaking killer sidehill though.

Noseheavy and a tight rear suspension makes for some interesting downhills.

All in all, a decent (and fun!) first run. Definitely have some tuning to do.

 

[OSRC]

Came home and took apart the rear end and found all kind of issues. The shocks were a mess - the ball ends were binding up a bit, I had the wrong size long springs in each, and the 4 holes in the pistons looked partially blocked. I cleaned up the piston and drilled out all 4 holes a bit bigger. I put in the correct sized 90mm springs (I must have used springs from the 80mm version) and switched from a medium to a soft small spring while I was in there. Finally, I dug around in my stash until I found some better fitting ball ends and filled up with 25wt oil and it's back in business. Everything moves much, much more freely. In fact, I might have made it a bit too soft with the oil and pistons but now at least I think it's in the ballpark.

Ready for round 2!

 

[Saltrock]

I really like how you delt with the servo wire by wrapping it around the chassis brace.

Aluminator: I figured if an old Integy aluminum chassis would do that good, a more modern carbon chassis would be better. I settled on a Power Hobby carbon chassis and tore the old girl down for a rebuild.

Definitely a lighter setup! 50 grams right off the bat.

However, the sunshine and rainbows ended pretty quickly when setting up the links. Clearly, they were not meant for Capra axles and it was either make some new ones or swap axles. I hate making links, so I started digging around.

In my SCX box, I had more than enough parts to build some nice AR44 axles. Also found an SOA mount I completely forgot about. So pretty much it was meant to be and I swapped everything over. Links fit perfectly and it all fell together.

Figured this would give me a nice straight axle rig to compare to the 2 portal trucks I had been running. I stole the skid, electronics, shocks and transmission from the Aluminator and almost have myself a roller. COG is ridiculous, it's stable at over 90 degrees.

However, I built the chassis 78mm wide and I've got a lot of rubbing. Way too much, not sure what I want to do here. Wider wheels? rebuild as 70mm and fab a new skid? Not sure.